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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 10, 2026

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults
08:25

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults

Published on: October 19, 2014

Interactions between reward and threat during visual processing.

Kesong Hu1, Srikanth Padmala, Luiz Pessoa

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

Neuropsychologia
|June 18, 2013
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Monetary rewards can override the negative impact of threat stimuli on performance. This brain imaging study shows how reward processing in the brain influences threat perception and behavior.

Keywords:
Anterior mid-cingulate cortexRewardThreatVentral caudatefMRI

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Last Updated: May 10, 2026

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults
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Published on: October 19, 2014

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Published on: September 12, 2014

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Decision Making

Background:

  • Appetitive stimuli (e.g., monetary rewards) enhance performance.
  • Aversive stimuli (e.g., threat cues) often impair performance.
  • Interactions between reward and threat processing are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Investigate the interaction between monetary reward and threat processing.
  • Examine how reward influences the processing of task-irrelevant threat stimuli.
  • Understand the neural mechanisms underlying simultaneous appetitive and aversive processing.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study.
  • Visual discrimination task with foreground and background stimuli.
  • Monetary reward linked to fast, accurate foreground responses.
  • Mild aversive shock paired with background context to create threat.

Main Results:

  • Monetary reward significantly reduced the impairing effects of threat stimuli on behavioral accuracy and reaction time.
  • fMRI data showed increased activation in the ventral caudate and anterior mid-cingulate cortex during combined reward and threat conditions.
  • Enhanced task-relevant visual cortex processing was observed when reward counteracted threat.

Conclusions:

  • Monetary reward effectively mitigates the influence of concurrent threat stimuli on behavior.
  • Specific brain regions (ventral caudate, anterior mid-cingulate cortex) are involved in integrating reward and threat information.
  • Simultaneous processing of appetitive and aversive information dynamically shapes brain activity and behavioral outcomes.